When programming the festival, we strive to bring both the best documentaries, and most compelling films that bring out issues for discussion This year, one recurring theme through our films is that of fatherhood - what it means to be a father, what our fatherly relationships look like, and how this plays across the breadth of human experience.

Minding The Gap is the first of these, screening Friday night the 3rd of August. Shot over 10 years by auteur and skater Bing Liu, the film follows a group of skating friends seeking an escape from problems at home. As boys become men, tables turn in their relationships, and Liu focuses in on this chasm that is also a cycle, between fathers and sons. The film is a stunning piece of work, not to be missed!

Of Fathers and Sons is a far more surreal depiction of paternal relations, screening Sunday afternoon. Director Talal Derki actually talked his way into a radical Islamic famil home and training camp, in which he captures an intimate portrait of a Al-Nusra fighter father, and the experience of his sons growing up in the camp. Disquieting and confronting, yet the familial bonds still shine clear through haze of war.